Shortcut: Defending Criminals and Examining the Deceased

Meshel Laurie· Host0:00

[music] This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Lawrie. Have you ever wondered what kind of person could defend a murderer? Have you ever wondered what kind of person does autopsies for a living? Well, you're about to meet one of each. Our guests today are Joanna Glengarry, head of Forensic Pathology Services at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, and Timothy Marsh, a senior criminal lawyer who has spent his career working on some of Victoria's most serious cases. Their work sits at different points within the justice system, but regularly intersects in courtrooms and investigations where medical evidence and legal argument have to be interpreted together under intense scrutiny. Together, they explore what it means to work in that space and how two very different professions are brought together by the same question at the center of so many cases: what actually happened? This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. And a warning: this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

Timothy Marsh· Guest1:08

I suppose the thing that'd be more surprising, um, to listeners is that there's, there's more that brings us together than drives us apart in this sense. And, um, I think one of the things that both Jo and I are very, um, sort of animated about is trying to dispel the myths around the nature of what we do. CSI has obviously done a lot to create an entire mythology around, um,